ACTS ix. 4 117
undergo hardship and death for His sake, He said, " Why persecutest thou Me ? "
^ Why persecutest thou Me ? The enthroned Saviour is bound to every one of His subjects by ties of holy sympathy. Amid the glory of heaven He does not forget their needs.
He in the days of feeble flesh Poured out His cries and tears;
And, though exalted, feels afresh What every member bears.
Any act of kindness performed to His humblest follower is an act of kindness to Himself. "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even the least, ye did it unto me." Any act of cruelty to them is an act of cruelty to Him. " In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them : in his love and in his pity he redeemed them ; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." *
We have no tears Thou wilt not dry;
We have no wounds Thou wilt not heal; No sorrows pierce our human hearts
That Thou, dear Saviour! dost not feel.
Thy pity, like the dew, distils;
And Thy compassion, like the light, Our every morning overfills,
And crowns with stars our every night.
Let not the world's rude conflict drown
The charmed music of Thy voice, That calls the weary ones to rest
And bids all mourning souls rejoice.2
1 E. Morgan. 8 H. M. Kimball.
Come Over and Help Us.
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Literature.
Banks (L. A.), Paul and his Friends, 88.
Brooks (P.), The Candle of the Lord, 91.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and, Children, 3rd Ser., 257.
Gibbon (J. M.), The Vision and the Call, 1.
Jerdan (C), For the Lambs of the Flock, 302.
Little (J.), The Day-Spring, 132.
Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 35.
Parker (J.), The City Temple, i. (1872) 1.
Taylor (W. M.), The Silence of Jesus, 194.
Vaughan (C. J.), The Church of the First, Days, 341.
„ (J.), Sermons, 1st Ser. (1869), 57. Christian World Pulpit, xv. 296 (Dykes) ; xxxiii. 308 (Owen) ; xliii. 283
(Gibbon) ; li. 273 (Fairbairn) ; Hi. 67 (Oluwole) ; lv. 387 (Lawrence) ;
lix. 142 (Macdonald) ; Ixxiii. 341 (Warschauer). Church Pulpit Year Book, viii. (1911) 15. Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., viii. 175.
Come Over and Help Us.
And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.— Acts xvi. 9.
1. This, says Sir W. M. Eamsay, is in many respects the most remarkable paragraph in Acts. In the first place the Divine action is introduced three times in four verses, marking and justifying the new and great step which is made at this point. In xiii. 1-11 also the Divine action is mentioned three times, leading up to the important development which the author defines as " opening the door of belief to the Nations " ; but in that case there were only two actual manifestations of the Divine guidance and power. Here on three distinct occasions the guidance of God was manifested in three different ways — the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, and the Vision — and the three manifestations all lead up to one end, first forbidding Paul's purpose of preaching in Asia, then forbidding his purpose of entering Bithynia, and finally calling him forward into Macedonia. Now, amid " the multitude of the revelations " (2 Cor. xii. 7) granted to Paul, Luke selects only those which have a distinct bearing on his own purpose as a historian, and omits the vast majority, which were all important in their influence on Paul's conduct and character. What is his reason for the insistence in this case ?
2. It is not easy to account on strictly historical grounds for the emphasis laid on the passage to Macedonia. Lightfoot, in his fine essay on " the Churches of Macedonia," recognizes with his usual insight that it is necessary to acknowledge and to explain that emphasis ; but his attempt cannot be called successful. As he himself acknowledges, the narrative gives no ground to think that the passage from Troas to Philippi was ever thought of by Luke as a passage from continent to continent. A broad distinction between the two opposite sides of the Hellespont, as
122 COME OVER AND HELP US
belonging to two different continents, had no existence in the thought of those who lived in the iEgean lands, and regarded the sea as the path connecting the iEgean countries with each other ; and the distinction had no more existence from a political point of view, for Macedonia and Asia were merely two provinces of the Eoman Empire, closely united by common language and character, and divided from the Latin-speaking provinces farther west.
3. The sweep and rush of the narrative is unique in Acts: point after point, province after province, are hurried over. The natural development of Paul's work along the great central route of the Empire was forbidden, and the next alternative that rose in his mind was forbidden : he was led across Asia from the extreme south-east to the extreme north-west corner, and yet prevented from preaching in it ; everything seemed dark and perplexing, until at last a vision in Troas explained the purpose of this strange journey. We cannot but be struck with the fact, that in this paragraph the idea seems to clothe itself in the natural words, and not to have been laboriously expressed by a foreign mind. And the origin of the words becomes clear when we look at the concluding sentence: "Immediately we sought to go forth into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that ' God has called us for to preach the Gospel unto them.'" The author was with Paul in Troas ; and the intensity of this paragraph is due to his recollec- tion of the words in which Paul had recounted the vision, and explained the whole Divine plan that had guided him through his perplexing wanderings. The words derive their vivid and striking character from Paul, and they remained indelibly imprinted on Luke's memory.1